Coming out of the Dungeon.

Over the last ten years a trend has emerged that really gets under my skin.

I am a member (or at least was) of an oppressed minority that over the course of many years co-opted the derogatory term that was used against us as a badge of honor. Life was never easy for us. Unless you were willing to be ridiculed mercilessly, you couldn’t openly ask others if they shared the same interests. The only way to meet others was by collecting phone numbers off the back wall in dimly lit establishments. You then called these strangers and made arrangements to meet at their house. You never knew what you were walking into and more likely than not, they were a little crazy. But you didn’t care. You would do this again and again, because damn it, you needed your fix.

D&D (or more accurately AD&D 1st edition and then 2nd Edition), GURPS, MechWarrior, Call of Cthulhu, Rifts, Vampire, Marvel Superheroes, it didn’t matter. There was something special about sitting around a table with a bunch of guys (because it was always males), collectively telling a story.

We had a our bags of dice, elaborately painted miniatures, shelves upon shelves of books, cases of Mountain Dew, Doritos, pencils, paper and imaginations that could not be contained by the borders of Kentucky.

We were gamers and proud of it. But starting sometime around 2000, people that played video games started calling themselves gamers. I have nothing against video games and enjoy them occasionally but what they were doing and what we were doing weren’t anywhere close the same thing. When you play a role playing game (don’t even get me started on the video games that are classified as an RPG), you are participating in an organic story limited only by the collective imaginations of the people sitting at the table. When you play a video game, you are interacting with a story limited by what the programmer felt important to include.

Both may contain very similar themes, but at their core, the two hobbies could not be further apart. In fact, I could argue that they are the very opposite of each other.

But here we are in the year 2009 and almost exclusively the term “gamer” is used to identify people whose hobby is playing video games. What’s worse is that the role playing industry is moving towards making their games more video game like.

Arrrrgghhhhh!!!!

I know that I don’t have the time, but I really need to make the trek to the Rusty Scabbard, walk to the back wall and tear off the slip of paper with a phone number.

I still have my dice.